Shankapotomus

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The Struggle

It’s 3:30 AM and I’m sitting at my desk, Starbucks coffee adjacent to me along with my schoolbooks, and Coltrane playing loudly from my computer. I haven’t had sleep in almost 24 hours and my eyes are bloodshot. I have three important FINAL exams in a couple of hours and I’m cramming super hard for them. Some of the material is way too much to learn in one night. I feel like dying.

What is the focus and the directrix of the graph on the z axis of the parabola? Graph the oblique and write the matrices for the formula. Yes, this is a real question I’ve faced. Do you understand it? I don’t either.

This is a common occurrence in my life, as I find myself pulling all-nighters at least once a week. Why? I need to keep my grades top-notch to get into my choice university. Daily I struggle with time management, trying to juggle running an online LLC, stock trading, playing golf, and studying. Where is the time for sleep? On average, I get probably 2-3 hours of sleep a night and I feel like I can’t do it a minute longer.

How many of you high schoolers out there are in my exact situation? Considering I am writing this blog on part for my Honors English class, I’m sure there are many readers of my age group. Struggling to maintain your grades? Sleep deprived?

There is a reason we all do it, and that’s academic success. Everyone with the right motivation wants to do well and get into college, some more than others. As I write this, I have final exams approaching, and in order to maintain an A average I have to score significantly high on most all of them.

Today, teenagers have many choices in high school. They can take the advanced, average, or bottom route. You can guess, I chose to take the advanced route. This requires me to stay up for hours on end doing countless amounts of work daily. It’s actually not assigned homework I’m doing, yet it’s studying for exams that kills me.

Is all of this worth it? Should we be spending the last years of our childhood working harder than adults? The answer is yes, but it can go both ways. If you are academically capable of success, then definitely go for it; just be careful of the risks. You can’t give up halfway through the semester and say you’ve had enough, because your grade will be screwed and there’s no going back. You have to be motivated enough to do it.

Academic success brings a lot of good fortune in life. Doing well in high school gets you into a good college, which in turn gets you a high-paying and rewarding career.

Ponder on this as you select your high school courses for next year. I’m going back to studying!